Health

There are different types of health/medical buildings these include, Hospitals, Day Care Centres, Doctors Surgeries/Health Centres, Residential Care Homes & Extra Care Accommodation. Interactive have helped designers and builders create safe environments in many of these up and down the country.

Because of the differing physical/mental needs of the occupants in Hospitals and Residential Care Homes, buildings are designed with a greater degree of compartmentation. This allows patients to be evacuated away from the fire on the same floor while remaining relatively safe. This is called 'Progressive Horizontal Evacuation'. Protection of the stairs is a fundamental requirement of this strategy.

As building designers strive to create more interesting and diverse spaces within these buildings the smoke control requirements change. Interactive have been involved with numerous projects where we have provided smoke control as the essential link in the fire strategy.

Extra Care residential accommodation is generally provided with smoke ventilation in a similar way to normalresidentialbuildings. However it is likely that additional communal facilities are provided and these areas will need to be handled accordingly. The trend in building stand alone extra care centres has grown over recent years and Interactive have been called upon to provide innovative solutions that can maximise a developers return while still providing the required level of fire safety.